Posts Tagged 'Pereidolia'

My bullshit detector went off as soon as I saw this story…what a pathetic bit of journalism.

It begins…

A Kentucky man said his surveillance camera captured something in his back yard last week, but no one is sure what it is.

Here’s the picture he captured:

Ok…why is this in the news? It’s a fuzzy black blob, and you can’t tell what it is. The owner of the picture says:

“It looked like it had the outline of a head, and, like, gorilla-type shoulders, and then the arms crossed is what it looks like to me,” Mahoney told WAVE-TV Monday.

Yeah it vaguely resembles that, but gorillas in Kentucky? The story goes on…

Mahoney said he doesn’t think he captured Bigfoot on film. But that doesn’t explain what the camera saw, either. Mahoney said whatever it was smashed down weeds and grass as it passed.

If he doesn’t think that it was a Bigfoot picture, where did the reporter get the idea to put the word “Bigfoot” in the headline?

Where are the pictures of the smashed down weeds and grass?

The story also links to a slideshow of images which are telling. The first image is this one:

And then they keep getting more and more zoomed in (they get more and more blurry). When you see it to scale it’s obviously not big enough to be a gorilla as it barely goes any higher than the low brush.

One commenter on the story suggested that it may be a bird coming in for a landing. I can see this as if you look at the more zoomed in picture above it looks kind of like a bird coming towards and to the right of the camera with its wings folded in front of it. The makes sense to me as the camera is meant to take wildlife photos (according to the article), and a bird is fast-moving enough that it would create a blurry image whereas land animals would be slow enough that he could get a clear picture of them.

The story concludes with this gem:

His wife took the photo to a wildlife expert on black bears, who said that whatever it was, it was fur-covered. But she told Mahoney’s wife that she couldn’t say for sure it was a bear, either.

How anyone can tell that that’s anything fur-covered from such a blurry and far-away image is beyond me. And then of course since they can’t say for sure that it’s a bear, the person writing the headlines decided to go with Bigfoot.

I wonder how many of my fudged up photos I could get published in the newspaper?

I noticed a cute little fluff piece in my local paper the other day: a man in BC had discovered a rock with an indentation that looks like a footprint:

That’s pretty cool, but I think it might just be a coincidence, a case of pereidolia. There are hills where there should be valleys. The people who found it did the right thing and sent pictures to anthropologists and paleontologists to verify whether or not it is a real fossil.

I didn’t think anything of the story until today when I saw this article in the Calgary Herald, which speculates that it may be Bigfoot’s footprint. What the hell, Calgary Herald?!

1. It hasn’t even been confirmed that this is a real footprint.

2. The guy who found it said his foot fit perfectly in the indentation…if it is a real footprint it’s probably human.

3. Bigfoot? Seriously? Maybe if Bigfoot were found to be real and residing in BC it would be reasonable, but there’s no reason why this reporter should be speculating that this is Bigfoot’s footprint.

I was lying on my balcony this morning enjoying watching the clouds roll by, when I noticed a face staring back at me.

It was just a little scuff mark on the window frame, but my brain, looking for order, pulled a tiny little face out of it. My very own pereidolia! Here it is, I tried to get the clearest picture possible but this was the best I could do:

Maybe if I were a Christian I would have seen Jesus…instead, and it’s kind of random, I saw Data. You know, the android from Star Trek.

I stared at it for a little while longer and thought maybe it looked more like a vulcan. But I think I’ve decided it looks most like a Cardassian, mostly because of the big neck.

I thought it was funny that all I could see were Star Trek characters, but I do love Star Trek!

When I was looking for information on putting a base on the moon that I talked about in the previous post, I came across a fun bit of kookiness.

Proof of aliens on the moon

Here are some people who believe that there are alien structures and artifacts on the moon:

“Is there an “Alien Base” on the Moon? More and more people are coming forward with stories that might prove this is true. Rumors say that there is an Alien Moon Base on the far side of the moon, the side we never see from Earth.
Did you ever wonder why the Moon landings stopped and why we have not tried to build a Moon Base? It does seem like a better and easier idea than a floating space station with no access to any raw materials or supplies? According to the NASA Astronaut Neil Armstrong the aliens have a base on the Moon and told us in no uncertain terms to get off and stay off the Moon! ”

“Sound far fetched? Milton Cooper, a Naval Intelligence Officer tells us that not only does the Alien Moon Base exist but the U.S. Naval Intelligence Community refers to the Alien Moon Base as “Luna,” that there is a huge mining operation going on there, and that is where the aliens keep their huge mother ships while the trips to Earth are made in smaller “flying saucers”. ”

“LUNA: The Alien base on the far side of the Moon. It was seen and filmed by the Apollo astronauts. A base, a mining operation using very large machines, and the very large alien craft described in sighting reports as mother ships exist there.” -Milton Cooper

How fun!

There is also an accompanying video on the website that provides a ton of examples of pereidolia, as someone has pored over pictures of the moon and imagined every smudge or line or geometric line to be evidence of civilization on the moon.